Sinistro - "Semente" (video) (premiere)

Portugal’s Sinistro delivers an eerie and beautifully unsettling track with “Semente", the title tune of the group’s upcoming full-length. A dark and unsettling music bed that summons memories of Antimatter, Portishead or Ulver’s stopover in the realm of motion picture soundtracks while vocalist Patricia Andrade evokes even more mystery with her seductive and deeply emotive voice.

The song is derived from an improvisation the band conducted in the final hours of the writing stages. Andrade improvised the lyrics and recorded three takes though the first, as it happened, was the one that made the album. Director José Dinis conceived the slow-motion sequence shot which took a little more effort to get right than the song itself, although the visual results are equally stunning.

"The best things in life are the simple ones,” Dinis says. “Some drops of light through a very short path, that we must enjoy and take everything we can out of them. This sequence was shot three times faster than the original tempo; it was an insane minute of filming, but it worked out smoothly in the end and I think it really works with the song’s feeling."

Having formed in 2012 the group (which is rounded out by members known only as F,Y,P and R), Sinistro carries members of Mourning Lenore, We Are the Damned and Besta in its ranks. Although that pedigree is impressive it does nothing to lessen the mystique surrounding Sinistro.

Sinistro tells PopMatters that "the last song to be composed for this album was the title-track 'Semente'. Patrícia's vocal part derives from an improvisation with ad lib lyrics. Three takes were recorded and in the end used the first one. Our director José Dinis came up with the concept and the idea of a slow motion sequence shot in a way that all light and camera work had to be choreographed. After a few trials we finally got it right."

The group releases Semente on April 8 with tour dates in France, Holland and, of course, Portugal to coincide with the street date. The album is available for pre-order now.

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